Solr - established, mature and well known open-source search server, commonly used. Elasticsearch - still young, but quickly gaining popularity, with over 200k downloads per month. Both search servers are based on Lucene - the open-source full text searching Java library, but each with their own extensions, their pros and cons.

We all know that Solr and Elasticsearch are different, but what those differences are and which solution is the best fit for a particular use case is a frequent question. We will try to make those differences clear, not by showing slides and compare them, but by showing online demo of both Elasticsearch and Solr:

• Set up and start both search servers. See what you need to prepare and launch Solr and Elasticsearch
• Index data right after the server was started using the “schemaless” mode
• Create index structure and modify it using the provided API
• Explore different query use cases
• Scale by adding and removing nodes from the cluster, creating indices and managing shards. See how that affects data indexing and querying.
• Monitor and administer clusters.  See what metrics can be seen out of the box, how to get them and what tools can provide you with the graphical view of all the goodies that each search server can provide.